


light and goodness

by janjanfollower



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Crisis of Faith, Fish out of Water, Gen, Introspection, tags to be added as it advances
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-05-25 10:45:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6192007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janjanfollower/pseuds/janjanfollower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pike is away from Vox Machina, restoring Sarenrae's lost temple in Vasselheim. Even through it's fulfilling and Vasselheim is quickly becoming a new home, she can't help but wish her family was with her.</p><p>A Pike Trickfoot study, as told by moments in her life since leaving Vox Machina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. where our family's bones are buried

Snow flowed gently through the air as Pike stepped outside the dilapidated temple archway. The temple saw enough sunlight throughout the day, the fallen wall allowing them to see the stone fortress-like walls of the city and just the beginning shoreline of the Ozmit Sea. Apparently the hole that opened the temple to Vasselheim was wide enough to let enough snow powder the outside of its stained glass. 

The cloth priestess dress felt like paper armor from the cold as it bit through her skin, sending a surge of frozen electricity from the core of her chest to the tips of her hands leaving them itching for a shiver. Vasselheim had a brand of cold that she had never felt before, even at sea. Emon wasn't a stranger to snow, it seemed every Winter's Crest allowed a good helping of it, but in the holy city the snow first dropped two months after she bid farewell to some of the best people she knew. 

Pike willed her breath in through her throat, and felt the cold string as though it were smoke. As she exhaled, her legs beginning to shake and tense at the sudden drastic temperature drop, her breath had the same visibility as if she really had inhaled smoke. She watched the air dance with itself upwards to the sky until she only saw the grey rolling plains of a frozen storm. She watched the clouds roll slowly along their path from the sea, her lungs pierced by the chill, as she wondered about Sarenrae. 

The Everlight had certainly made a strong enough impression on her family, bringing their legacy away from thieves and assassins, and Pike would probably be the last person to be ignorant of the generosity that she and her grandfather have been shown. It wasn't as if she had begun having doubts about her faith, nor as if she had begun to question her path in her life, but...

She remembered sadly when Grog once handed her the skin of the earlier morning's hunt, his wide doofy grin too innocent for the war paint on his chest to associate with it, saying he was practically a furnace and he could handle some pissy cold for the night. Pike balled her hands into fists and wondered why she was given this path. 

Pike didn't know if she always wanted to adventure. Maybe not? She missed the quiet days of when she was younger, sitting in her grandfather's hut as he pointed to a bushy, deep green branch that smelled vaguely of cinder and pollen and told her how that was Simbelmyne, how she needed to know to first grind it to a powder before she uses it in any sort of elixir or else she'd end up with an acid strong enough to melt your eyeballs, and then he laughed and said that nothing would happen to you, little Pike, if I'm here, and that's a promise. 

She really missed those days. 

Maybe she missed her friends more than anything. The last she saw them was in a world that wasn't theirs, walking on molten lava that couldn't help but remind her of the the duergar fortress and remember the adrenaline that ran through her (and everyone else) when Grog and Percy pulled Vax from being melted alive. After Keyleth dived to the red whirlpool, she couldn't help but notice after how Vax's breath hitched and his hands shook just enough for her to reach out to grab them—before Vax willed his legs forward and he fell down after their druid. 

She missed Vex and Keyleth, missed their half-hour gossip talks about pranks and small, innocuous heists while the boys thought they were talking about hair (which they did, but not in the main dinner hall). She missed Percy, remembering how her first impression of him was when she saw his fingers twitch against a metallic instrument that gave a near-deafening blast of fire magic, and how it wasn't until long after when they were in Westruun in their first Winter's Crest together when he explained it wasn't an enchanted device that he was using. Pike missed Scanlan, remembering seeing his face first when her soul met her body again after the glabrezu fight, seeing his normally playfully dismissive face now decorated with half-dried tear tracks and puffed eyes, and watching it bloom to a relieved, open-mouthed grin in the span of a half-second . Pike missed Tiberius, smelling, then hearing, then seeing his latest failed alchemical experiment through the crack of the door to his lab, hearing him curse in draconic as he didn't bother to notice the small gnome eye watching him pace furiously through his room, literal black smoke curling up from the corners of his mouth as he unconsciously readied a breath of angered fire. 

Pike missed Grog, seeing the horizon of the sunset with her legs on either side of his neck, watching the orange light paint his grey skin into something radiant, beyond himself. Goliath leper and holy runaway, together on the road to where they'll both survive together or die damned trying. 

Her elbow creaked as her arm moved up to grab the holy symbol hanging around her neck. Sarenrae knew she was missing her friends more than anything else. Why was she given this path, away from her family? Was this the ultimate redemption of the thin fracture that ran through her symbol in the Underdark, the true apology of transgression? Was she only a stepping stone in a great legacy for the god, revealing Sarenrae to the oldest city in the world, being a guiding angel along with her four-man crew? Was this only a precursor to rejoining Vox Machina once again, absence making her heart grow fonder and remembering why she loved them all?

Pike squeezed the holy symbol sitting in her small hand, the lady’s tiny, thin arms poking between her fingers, and as she breathed out a prayer that blew on pale white wind, she couldn't help but worry if Sarenrae was listening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a lyric from 250,000 Miles, from Ashley Johnson's Pike playlist.
> 
> My awesome, awesome friend Reese beta'd this fic, and he's the only reason this isn't an absolute pile of poo. Please send all your appreciation to him as well (he's super cool too, he totally deserves it).


	2. i'm doing fine (i plan to keep it that way)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you feel like you've read the first chapter before - survey says you have. This was meant to be a collection of one-shot fics, but after some consideration I figured it'd be a better idea to condense it all into one single fanfic and update it as I have the appropriate threads written out.

Vasselheim wasn't so bad, if Pike was being entirely honest. That didn’t mean it was amazing.

It had a certain grit to it. It seemed every part of the city was covered in a calloused layer, its citizens giving off an aura of cold far removed from its weather. The weather was unforgiving, the people were isolated, and there wasn't much in the way of so-called "comfort" that she was used to in Emon. The food tasted slightly of tar and the air left a smoky burn down her throat every time she breathed in, but she would be a fool to not notice the thrum of magic under her feet every time she took a step through the dirt roads littered across the city.

Pike hadn't ever been in a magical place, so to say. Keyleth always talked about her life with the Air Ashari, and the way she would describe it sounded nearly ethereal. For a long time, the idea of feeling magic live through every sense of your being just by living there seemed more like hyperbole, or maybe infatuation. But she suddenly understood that feeling when she and Vox Machina first stepped into Vasselheim. Where the air burned of smoke, it smelled different in each part of town. In the Braving Grounds, the air smelled of iron and blood; in the Abundant Terrace, it smelled more like pollen and a warm summer's afternoon.

Pike found out there was a cafe not far from the temple. Gesyra, a human priest working with the restoration as well, had told her that in the Quad Roads was a hole-in-the-wall cafe that had the best lunch she'd ever had. Pike had been somewhat avoiding the Quad Roads as best as she could (maybe it was the wanderer in her that didn't like overfilled crowds), but the idea of a lunch that wasn't standard rations made her stomach rumble for some actual _good_ food.

* * *

 

Pike officially had good reason to avoid the Quad Roads, she thought as she put a hand on the side of her face where an errant elbow slammed against her cheekbone.

Pike was tiny, as is the territory with being a gnome, so she knew from a young age how to avoid being hit by things she wasn't meant to be hit with. Even in the busiest bazaars of Emon's Abadar's Promenade, she could slide through crowds with little effort; the Quad Roads were a very different beast, however. The Promenade still had many stalls and stores, all far enough for Pike to breathe without hassle, but the Quad Roads were so close-knit and people were so packed that she wasn't sure which direction was which before she had been turned around by the sheer volume of flesh pressing against her bones.

She wasn't sure if she’d ever been in a louder place before in her life, either. The Bramblewoods were loud in their own respect, and Westruun and Emon weren't strangers to rowdy noises at the strangest hours of the night. But the Quad Roads sounded like Pike had entered every tavern she'd visited in her whole life at the same time, all the noises and voices and music overlapping until it became a discordant orchestra played by children who hadn't so much as begun speaking yet.

She wasn’t having a hard time breathing, per se, but the air between the people around her felt stale and hot, not unlike the summer air in Westruun when she and Grog would go and pick herbs for Wilhand and her to use. When she saw the dirty, timeworn blue awning, she could only feel relief at the idea of cool air entering her system once again.

The inside was cozy, if not smaller than she expected. She realized in that moment that Emon was a city whose buildings, whose bones, were new; she couldn't remember entering a store back home that wasn't spacious. Gilmore’s storefront flashed in her vision, with its large flooring decorated by display cases showing off magical items. But this cafe carried its time on its skin and in its flesh. The stone interior walls were weathered deeply, run smooth by hands and tables bumping against it over the centuries. The wood tables were scratched and paint-stripped, carvings of old and forgotten couples etched into it for eternity. Although the furniture was older than she could even imagine—probably older than Wilhand—there was a warmth to it all, a kindness hidden under the layer of longtime use. Even the drapery that hung next to the window showing the Quad Roads were worn, once rich red dye turned burgundy through dirt and dust.

"Can I help you?" A human spoke behind the bar-like counter that laid in the far right-hand corner of this store. He was maybe in his mid-thirties, with well-cut brown hair, dressed with a white apron over his simple cloth pants and dark brown shirt. Pike blinked before she laughed out a breath.

"Oh, yes! Sorry, ah, I'm not used to the Quad Roads quite yet, I guess," she said, voice slowly trailing off into embarrassment as she walked to the counter. She tried to ignore it, but her eyes flicked to her peripheral to see two figures, one elf and one human, watching her for the briefest of seconds before delving back into hushed talks. The man smiled, leaning his weight on the counter with his hands spread out far to his sides as she climbed up a stool to sit across him.

"You're new to Vasselheim, then?" She nodded. "Well, welcome to the Holy City, first of all. Hell of a place to come to when you don't know the area, here."

"I have a friend that I know; she said you have good food."

"Well, we certainly do," he chuckled, seeming to almost be bragging, and Pike smiled at his pride. Everything she's seen of Vasselheim was cold and rude, and it left her with a feeling of standoffishness. Watching this server however, with a warm face on as he leaned down under the counter, left a very different taste in her mouth.

He pulled out a sturdy piece of cardstock, and she noticed whatever words that were printed onto them were of food or drink. "Here's our menu," he said as Pike grabbed it. "Let me know when you're ready to order." She looked up at him, giving her own smile and nod, and he walked away from his counter to see to the other two patrons.

The music of the Quad Roads bled through the window and door, leaving enough noise in this small cafe to still be comfortable ambient music despite no singer. It was a welcome quiet from the streets outside, Pike thought as she read through the menu of meats and vegetables, salads with ingredients she's never heard of before, and that's impressive; she knows every plant under the sun. Well, she thought she did at least.

Vasselheim was intimidating by its size and very nature of being. The idea that this was the Holy City, where the gods have watched over the temples for millennia... It left Pike in awe. It was hard to ignore that she was standing where hundreds of people had made their solemn duty to pilgrimage to, and she couldn't help but feel like she was part of something grander than herself.

And it clicked in her brain, in that moment of swinging her legs on the stool that was so hilariously tall for her, that that was the reason so many lived here despite the curtness and the grime everywhere. It was beyond the certain magic, the divinity that stained the air; it was the revelation that you were more than anything in the city, you were walking in the streets that the gods look down upon.

Pike smiled as she lowered the menu, looking up at the timeworn smooth stone wall. Perhaps she'll like living here more than she expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [slim shady voice] guess who's back back back, back again gain gain
> 
> I dropped this for six weeks because I was stuck at the spot where Pike is describing her claustrophobia in the Quad Roads. I got stuck with this because, as someone who lives in New York, claustrophobia is a phenomena I've had to unlearn; so I had a really harsh divide between my experience and hers, and had to drop it for a few weeks as it simmered. I'm happy I was able to come back to this and continue with it. :D
> 
> Chapter title is from Where'd You Go from Ashley's Pike playlist.
> 
> My lovely beta, Reese, is still a guy whose everlasting patience to my harassing him to reading my things needs to be immortalized in bardic song. Seriously, he's awesome.


End file.
